Heh. I agree with Rowan. Im from Melbourne myself, and I dont know what you were being told but I think somebody was pulling your legs.

As a handy guide if youre ever having trouble pronouncing Aussie words, the trick is to basically view letters, especially vowels, as just sort of a suggestion. If theres an inconvenient letter in there that seems not really worth bothering about then no worries mate! Leave it out.

ie:
Brisbane – You pronounced this correctly. Too many vowels, so its just “Brisbn”.
Melbourne – this is the same concept as Brisbane. Just go with “Melbn”, or if you really want you can try to squeeze a little bit of an ‘r’ in there to make it “Melbrn”.

You’re also not too far off on Maori, I think. As far as I know its just like Chairman Mao, but with less communist revolution.

Satanism is not a monolith. LaVeyan Satanists might be atheistic, but not all Satanists are LaVeyan. There are theistic forms of Satanism as well.

The Florida Satanist group that has recently lent its support to Rick Scott belong to The Satanic Temple. Go to their website and look at what they believe. They explicitly state that they belief in a supernatural God. They are not atheists.

I’m offended that you called me busy.
I’m actually just an asshole. The fact that I’m so troubled is why I’m not more vocal about my atheism, it wouldn’t reflect well on the rest of you with a less checkered past. I appreciated that though, thank you Cecil!

As for Satanism, Anathema is right about it not being a monolithic belief structure. It is like Taoism in that there are religious Taoists and philosophical Taoists, or how one can be an atheist Buddhist. (The guest who described it as “a system of mental hygiene” is an example.)

Technically, Satanism is part of the Abrahamic faith tree, as it is based on Christian cosmology and a reaction to Christian philosophy.

The “philosophical” equivalent is one who essentially worships power. I think the best analogy for this is to imagine Ayn Rand style Objective Libertarianism, but replace “money” with “power”. They are frameworks to justify acquisition of money and power.